Your Friendly Neighborhood Music Critic

Tyler, the Creator – Cherry Bomb

Tyler, the Creator, the quick to fame Odd Future creator and head, seems to be stuck in the past. While Earl has moved on since EARL, and essentially, Odd Future, Tyler is ranting the same angered, homophobic, sexually violent, and frustrated material since 2009. And while Odd Future rose to the popularity that it is at today for that sole reason, that they were rule breakers and rebellious young kids rapping about things that are “taboo” or sadistic, the story is beginning to fade and lose our interests.

Tyler, the Creator’s character choice was fantastic, from its creation on Bastard, to its emergence on Goblin, and the people go crazy for it, they love Tyler, but isn’t it about time for that character to evolve and not remain static? Earl just released his new album, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, and while Doris might actually be a better example for Earl’s metamorphosis since EARL, the material here on Cherry Bomb feels like Tyler is just so stuck in his ways that he can’t move on, and that his character is becoming more of a gimmick that I don’t want to pay attention to than Odd Future has ever been to me before.

For starters, Cherry Bomb is mostly un-listenable. If you’ve got it through your Apple iPod headphones, just forget about it. Save yourself the ear damage. But through computer speakers or some decent headphones, you can at least get through it. A combination of too many high frequencies that weren’t cut out in the mix, over distortion, screaming samples, and Tyler’s vocals sitting so low in the mix that we have to strain our ears to hear what he’s saying through all of the aforementioned noise issues, Cherry Bomb is kind of a disaster. And it can’t be anything but purposefully distorted and problematic.

Tyler has been able to prove himself over and over again as a great producer, his last album, Wolf, sounded great. So it can’t be a mixing blunder, it’s supposed to be like this. Nonetheless, some tracks, like the lighter ones, “Find Your Wings,” “Blow My Load,” “2Seater,” and “Fucking Young,” etc., sound really good. It’s mainly only, “Deathcamp,” “Pilot,” “Cherry Bomb,” “Run,” etc., that are the un-listenable ones. While I would love to see Tyler’s character evolve and mature like the rest of the successful members of Odd Future’s have (Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt, the Internet), if Tyler wants to go on a little rampage temper-tantrum for now, then let him, and just hope he’ll eventually calm down.